I have a new default fly pattern. When I fish a new water, or an old haunt in new circumstances, I break out a Quigley cripple, or one of its variations. More often than not the cripple turns out to be a great searching pattern.
Do a little Internet snooping and you’ll find that the cripple was developed by tying legend Bob Quigley, who died earlier this year.
Quigley developed the pattern in northern California in the 1970s, probably on the Fall River, and he surely tested the pattern on many of the great trout streams of that region. But “where” isn’t so important as “how” anyway. The story goes that Quigley was fishing a small humpy, and found that the more fish he caught the rattier the fly became, and, surprisingly, that rattier fly caught more fish than fresh patterns in his fly box. When Quigley returned to the vise he went to work recreating that trashed humpy and the Quigley cripple was born.
The Quig is an unusual looking fly. To anglers unfamiliar with the pattern it isn’t always clear how to fish it. It looks a little like a traditional mayfly pattern, albeit one that’s had its hackle trimmed like a recruit on the first day of boot camp. And there’s the wing, usually made of elk hair, which doesn’t so much sit upright like a traditional pattern, but sweeps forward over the hook eye like a greaser’s pompadour.
The body is lightly dressed and instead of the stiff tails of a traditional mayfly, the Quig sports a floppy tail often of marabou. Today the stork feathers are often replaced with synthetic yarns.
It’s a fly that doesn’t really make sense until you understand how it is dressed and fished. That pompadour and remnant hackle get floatant while the body and tail remain undressed. This results in the fly that rides in the surface film with the hook shank perpendicular rather than parallel to the water’s surface. That dressed wing floats on top, while the body hangs below in the surface film.
What you end up with is a presentation that mimics an emerging mayfly that didn’t quite make it to adulthood. Mayflies spend the vast majority of their lives under water, as nymphs, living on the stream bottom eating moss and algae, or for some species, other nymphs. Then, when the time is right — usually announced by rising water temperatures and the increased daylight intensity of mid summer, the nymphs begin to mature and as they do, their exoskeleton fills with gas.
As this happens the bugs begin to rise to the surface, which apparently freaks them out because the bugs do everything they can do to overcome this increased buoyancy and swim back to the bottom.
Imagine how humans would react if the force of gravity was suddenly switched off and we all began floating off into space and you get the idea of what these emerging mayflies look like.
Mayfly nymphs are terrible swimmers, however, and they’re soon on the surface. There the bug’s exoskeleton splits, and if all goes well, a mature mayfly emerges. After a moment or two the bug’s wings dry and a “dun” flutters away. These are the classic trout flies you see flying above the water in that familiar bobbing flight pattern.
Occasionally the nymph rises to the surface, but fails to emerge fully from the nymphal shuck. This “cripple” hangs in the surface film, and a trout — whose main preoccupation is keeping an eye on the grocery store that is constantly floating by in the water column — has to quickly decide if it should go up and have a bite.
If you like to fish dry flies you know that actively feeding trout often pass on your surface offerings. One reason for this is that the fish learns that those wing-drying duns are moments from flying away. If the trout moves to the surface only to see its meal take flight that’s wasted effort.
A “crippled” fly isn’t going anywhere. Trout get this. That’s a good thing for fly fishers.